In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Paulo Freire discusses the relationship between a teacher, student, and the society. He refers to the teacher as the narrating subject while the student is the listening object. The discussion changes and loses meaning as it makes education appear as suffering from narration sickness where the teacher discusses about a reality as if it were motionless, static and one that could be predicted before it happened. The discussion shows the teacher’s duty as one of filling students with content of his narration, which are detached from reality hence making words empty. The exceptional characteristic of this type of narrative education is the harmony of words rather than the content where students are made to memorize meaningless phrases.
It further examines education as a banking process. The assertion turns education into some sort of deposition system where the teacher is the depositor and the student is the depository. Even worse, the students make little effort to learn on their own since they have learnt to be fully dependent on the teacher to fill them with knowledge. Further, Paulo states that oppressors usually apply this type of education since it aligns students to adapt to the world as it is and to view reality as represented to them by the teachers. Teachers control the thinking of the students making them passive.
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Even so, Freire presents the problem-posing educational approach. He states that people should abandon the banking process and accustom to the ‘Problem-Posing’ type of education. He argues that this type of education instills consciousness through embracing communication between the students and the teacher.
In my response, I agree with the author that the banking approach of education should be disposed. We should adapt the pedagogy theory of the oppressed that views education as a practice of freedom. It transforms the society by disposing the notion of the oppressed and the oppressor. In this approach, both the student and the teacher are able to teach and learn from each other. This education type is a critical pedagogy that tends to reconstruct both the school and society. However, most people still have a misconceived notion of education as simply taking complex information. This poses the question, “Has education really taken the form of freedom or is it still undergoing transformation?”
In the Handbook of Public Pedagogy, Lisa Yun Lee helps us to understand the roles of museums in relation to human rights. Lisa considers herself as an activist in the museum setting and the life surrounding it thus she explains that a museum is a Dangerous Site. She is the Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.
Jane Addams was the first American woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She was considered as ‘The most dangerous person in the United States’ and also at one point in history labeled as ‘Public Enemy #1.’ Addams is viewed as dangerous because she advocated for the rights of women and was a peace activist during the time of war. In this discussion, Lisa states that main topics addressed in the museum environment include alternative lifestyles, public sphere movement, and immigration. Lisa created an environment that allows for discussion on these issues that are still prevailing today.
The first role of the museum discussed is that of helping to create an environment that encourages critical thinking through fostering curiosity. They act as informal learning sites. They act as sale centers of history; hence, they provide a proper way of approaching it creating a connection with the past so that we can assume responsibility, claim it as our own through actively engaging people visiting museums in history, and make them participate to get its meaning. Therefore, understanding our past presents us with alternative lifestyles that were lived in the past. It helps us to gain the ability to expound on information offered at museums.
Further, she claims that museums help in preserving the public sphere movement. Hull-House history reminds us that the public sphere has been historically constructed and creatively visualized. Public sphere is viewed as the end-result of the struggle. This movement helped to win women the rights to vote. The Hull-House museum history helped to set up the Immigrant’s Protective laws. It helped to end the fraudulent activities happening to immigrants.
As shown above, Hull-House worked at addressing peace issues through fighting for women’s rights, immigrant’s rights, and other forms of justice. Therefore, I concur with the notion that museums help in attaining social, political, and economical justice and peace for all since they act as centers of public growth of learners where people manage to unleash their imaginations and ideas of the different world hence creating a socially just environment. However, in the bigger picture, people do not view museums as centers set up to foster peace. This poses the question whether museums do appeal to the wider audience as centers that would establish peace.
